Barcelona’s Carles Puyol tours pyramids, grand Egyptian museum

CAIRO: Former Barcelona captain Carles Puyol took sightseeing to Giza pyramids and the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) on Friday, the antiquities ministry announced in a statement Friday.

During his tour to the Gem, Puyol and his wife expressed their admiration for the grandeur of the design of the GEM’s building and expressed his wish to visit the museum during inauguration.

GEM, situated on 120 acres of land, is located 2 km southwest of the Giza Pyramids and was scheduled to be inaugurated in August 2015, but due to funding issues, according to former Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al Damaty’s statement in Al-Ahram; it is not expected be inaugurated before 2018.

The construction of the three-phase project, which includes the construction of the museum’s main building and implementation of the master plan, landscape parks and surrounding site infrastructure, began in March 2012, and two phases have been completed so far.